Imaging method highlights new role for cellular “skeleton” protein

While your skeleton helps your body to move, fine skeleton-like filaments within your cells likewise help cellular structures to move. Now, Staff Scientist Uri Manor and co-first authors Cara Schiavon and Tong Zhang have developed a new imaging method that lets them monitor a small subset of these filaments, called actin. They observed how actin mediates an important function: helping the cellular “power stations” known as mitochondria divide in two. The work could provide a better understanding of mitochondrial dysfunction, which has been linked to cancer, aging and neurodegenerative diseases.